 Poster: A snowHead
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Looking at Winterhighland all the Scottish centres seem to have relatively good snow conditions at the moment, but the pics show empty car parks.
It's chucking down with snow as I write this at Cairngorm.
I would go myself, but have other commitments and the price of the ferry is prohivitive.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Why not indeed. However, a young family means I have to plan ahead for any trip. Scottish snow has the reputation of vanishing as soon as my plans are laid.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I was going to go this weekend, but vandals have slashed the roof on my car. So now I can't afford to. 
Never mind.
There's always next year.
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Hmmm, I have done it once and would do so again, but the Alps are actually nearer and cheaper to get to and certainly more reliable for snow  It's a no-brainer for anyone in the south.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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It's too far away. 
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| Quote: |
Looking at Winterhighland all the Scottish centres seem to have relatively good snow conditions at the moment, but the pics show empty car parks.
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Cairngorm was very good at the weekend for April. Top to bottom skiing was possible, though the bottom of the M1 was getting a bit narrow and the rocks were showing, the bottom of the Daylodge was broken and the Faicail Ridge run looked a bit narrow in places, but I didn't ski it myself. M2 and Daylodge were a really nice ski to get down, just had to walk the last 20m. The burnside seemed complete, but again didn't ski it. The new snow falling now should help fill in some of the holes and freshen up the surfaces. Rest of the runs were very nice, Ciste gulley was good on Saturday untracked soft snow and complete all the way to the boardwalk. Traverse to the bottom of the WW poma was geting a bit sketchy and the skin up over yonder was hard work. Unfortunately the bull wheel bearing on the WW poma has broken so not sure when they will get it repaired  - which is a real shame as both the Ciste gulley and M2 were really nice  over the weekend.
The Gorm was very very quiet over the weekend, car park was about 3/4 full by mid morning, but there was hardly anyone on the pistes. Lifts were empty hardly ever a queue. CML ran every lift they can run except the WWpoma (broken) and Sheiling tow. On Sunday they didn't run the Daylodge poma (uptrack broken, no WWpoma and no users on Saturday) or the Lady Tow (insufficient skiers to justify doubling up with the M1 poma) though personaly I would have prefered the Lady Tow as the run down to the tow was in better nick than the traverse across to the M1 from the bottom of the Lady which was getting a bit sketchy.
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Surely it's worth a trip to anyone in the northern half of GB?
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Dave Horsley, What about the West Wall itself? Doesn't anyone ski it anymore? What about East wall of the Ciste?
johnboy, Definitely - all northerners should jump in their cars and GO - you can stay there in caravans reasonably cheaply (expensive in hotels). also B & B in villages .... It won't always be there if peeps don't go - I can't - like SMALLZOOKEEPER, it's too far away (& I have too many peeps out here right now), but I would if I could, just because I could! 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I'm just putting a post here to see the answer to easiski, qu on w/wall and e/wall as the couple of times I did them I thought they were great runs
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Back in my northern dwelling days I recall some fantastic weekends up in Scotland. Key in those pre reliable t'internet days was obsessive monitoring of ceefax with a couple of calls to honest ski shops & a willingness to set off at 5am Saturday morning for a weekend.
The Alps aren't necessarily better at any given point in time- ask anyone skiing the Portes de Soleil last Thursday (fortunately I went out Thursday night)
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Yup,have to agree with Ray Zorro
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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fatbob, a good day in Scotland can equal the conditions anywhere, but then a good day anywhere can, etc., etc.
Want to make a small wager on the number of "decent" days in the Alps - PDS if you like - compared to the number of open days in any of the Scottish areas?
Don't get me wrong, I'm Scottish (although I will support England if they're not playing Scotland, it's only fair, particularly considering how they're playing sport these days  ) & learned in Scotland (some say my "style" (?) still reminds then of the Scottish-Norwegian ski school) between Cairngorm, Glenshee and Glencoe.
If I lived in Glasgow or Edinburgh I might head up of a weekend (although I think touring might be more fun) but even living there the average weather, snow conditions and overall facilities hardly attract when compared to the average in, say, the PDS, Grands Montets, etc. (I will admit I haven't skied in Scotland for 8 years so am prepared to be pleasantly surprised).
Add to that the costs involved... Once Queasyjet, Outspan, et al. expand to doing daily and well timed services Glasgow-Geneva it'll be cost and time effective to day trip to Chamonix compared to a day at the Lecht... There arises an entertaining marketing conundrum, n'est-ce pas?
P.S. It's supposed to rain in Morzine at this time of year. I hope you weren't surprised?
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I've always wanted to ski in Scotland, but it's a long way from London. Most of us have to plan in advance, and that is not really practical for Scottish skiing.
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You know it makes sense.
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David Murdoch,
I wouldn't for one minute pretend that Scotish skiing could be anything as good as PDS, but surely still worth a weeked trip for anyone in the Central belt?
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I've skied a fair few times in Scotland from Leeds, key is last minute, which as Marc says is not that practical with kids etc. When I pre-planned a trip over New Years I put my wife and her friend off skiing in Scotland for ever due to high winds and rain!
Spring, IMHO, is the best time to ski Scotland, I've had some awesome April and one May weekend up there, skiing the Back Corries.
regards,
Greg
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Poster: A snowHead
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Guys - get yourself onto ww.winterhighland.com and check out some of the pics.
You might be surprised how good the skiing in Scotland can be.
I mad my first turns of this season at Cairngorm in late November.
Its now early April (4.5 months later!) and the scottish season still has a few weeks left in it.
No excuses....
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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johnboy, actually, it can, just not very often
The tricky thing is consistency and reliability. Even when I lived in Edinburgh and tried to ski at weekends, trips were ofetn cancelled at a days notice due to weather or snow. It's fine if you can just take a day of ad hoc, or decide the night before, but I don't believe it's reliable enough to be realistic for anyone other than local locals.
Where else has "snow fences" to keep the snow on the pistes and not drifting all over the place.?
That said, we didn't (although we could have) ski Saturday 25th in the PDS as 'twas raining.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Although very short by Alpine standards the steep back bowl at Nevis Range still holds very happy memories (I was once the first down it after a week of snow storms closed everything down - glorious, though even then very unusual conditions).
As far as I know the back lifts haven't even opened this year, and from what I hear they have hardly been used since they were built. (Of course my experience above was from 20 years ago when you could still fairly much rely on finding snow, of some sort, in Scotland. Probably wind-scoured boiler-plate, mind you. And at that time the back-lifts didn't exist, so I assume people have been skiing there sometimes and then traversing back around the mountain as we did.)
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I'll love how all these people who live in the south of england are experts on Scottish skiing - and feel qualified to write it off. Off course its not Meribel - but that exactly why we love it.
Get out there ya bunch of slackers.
Doug
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I really wish we had a resource like this smmewhere in Ireland. Our hills are just to low 
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If what I've heard about the back lifts at Nevis Range is wrong please say so. I'd be very happy to hear it. (I'd come up and Ski in Scotland now if I could and am certainly hoping I can come up in the future - despite the 10 hour drive.)
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Scottish Ski Bum, why are you only halfway down the flypaper? Run out of snow?
Just for the record...I last skied Scotland in March '98 - a year in which I had 3 planned trips cancelled due to conditions. Prior to that I skied Scotland consistently from 1970-ish to 1988 with family, at school and university - most feasible weekends and at least trying a couple of weeks a year. My recollection includes a few stunning days but many many that were cold, wet, windy, snowy, haily, icy, etc. No matter what, I was out there...
Can't claim to be an expert but just cos I happen to be temporarily located in London doesn't mean I haven't had a little experience of the whole shebang!
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| David Murdoch wrote: |
Where else has "snow fences" to keep the snow on the pistes and not drifting all over the place.?
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Ozstralia mate!
In fact they are also placed to catch it so they can "farm it" to cover the runs.... our best skiing is usually the stuff that blows in from the main part of the range - it is pretty light compared to the normal stuff...
My home resort is also planting trees for snow retention (having bulldozed them all xxx years ago.... they now realise a couple of narrower runs with trees between will be better than a huge expanse that the wind denudes...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I seem to remember seeing a pic of a South African ski hill which had covers to shade the runs from the strong sun.
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yeah - we could do with sunshades too most of the time.... but warm winds play havoc as does WARM RAIN..... nice warm rain melts base very fast....
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brian
brian
Guest
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snowball, the lift in the back coire (singular) hasn't run much since its installation, you're right. However, that's only partly due to lack of cover. It's a 2nd hand, ancient, fixed grip double chair they got from somewhere in Italy, I think. For a while, when it ran at all, they could only load every 2nd chair. IIRC, they were supposed to be replacing the engine, don't know if it got done or not.
You can still have great fun skiing the back coire without the lift running, btw, you just end up with one leg shorter than the other at the end of the day (like the old haggis gag).
I've had loads of fantastic days skiing at home, but as David Murdoch says, it's best if you don't plan more than a day or 2 in advance and can change plans at the drop of a hat.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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easiski,
I've not skiied the west wall itself this year, looked to be plenty of snow where the wall of the gulley turns around towards the WWpoma, but when the gulley first opened it was hard and icy and the entry to it may have been very thin not sure of how much snow was on the wall itself, but it may have been skiied. East wall was pretty good a couple of weeks ago, I skiied the higher gulley (2?) on the east wall a couple of weekends ago and it was very nice with winddrifted powder and both gulleys 1 and 2 were being done by others. With only the ww poma available as uplift the run out from the lower gulley is a bit more dificult, if you end up down at the board walk you have to wall both the board walk and then up to the poma. The link poma has been removed (it is going in to the Ptarmigan bowl). There was a lot of snow lost last week from outwith the fenced runs but both gulley 1 and 2 on the east wall still looked complete. Unfortunately the WW poma broke end of last week - bearing gone in the bull wheel - so the gulley is closed, but was still a nice ski for me on Saturday, tele'd it in an unpisted state with a nice layer of soft fresh snow and then skinned out to the M2/Daylodge up Overyonder. WWpoma should be fixed by the weekend and with teh new snow we've had and more forecast should be a good weekend coming up
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| Quote: |
Add to that the costs involved... Once Queasyjet, Outspan, et al. expand to doing daily and well timed services Glasgow-Geneva it'll be cost and time effective to day trip to Chamonix compared to a day at the Lecht... There arises an entertaining marketing conundrum, n'est-ce pas?
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And global warming here we come. The environmental cost of flying for a day trip never mind a long weeken is astronomical .
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You know it makes sense.
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| brian wrote: |
| snowball, the lift in the back coire (singular) |
Yes, true, the other one is really for access if you don't ski over the top.
I too used to ski regularly in Scotland and have even tried the touring (in dense cloud and a wind that twice blew over a Scottish lady member of our party. Then, of course, there was several miles walk-out below the snow-line through bogs and then a forestry road. Great fun.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Dave Horsley, I hope you're walking up then? And I trust you aren't employed in the oil industry? Nor that you benefit at all from your local oil related economy?
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Poster: A snowHead
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I would love to go, its just the 7 hour drive that puts me off
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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David Murdoch - it might be possible to fly to the alps for £1.99 - but this cost doesnt include the enviromental impact.
Maybe one day world governments will wise up and levy appropriate tax to airline fuel, but by then it may be too late.
No doubt many people on this forum who are writting off Scottish Skiing call themselves "serious skiers" (probably because they spend one week a year on "real" snow, skiing blue runs in La Plagne whilst wearing a nevica one piece suit).
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks to johnboy for directing me to this thread.
Thinking about a visit to snowy Scotland sometime in April (conditions allowing). Was thinking of the Nevis range or CairnGorm ... and wondered if there were any recommendations on hotels? In fact any advice or tips for a first trip North of the Border would be gratefully received!
Cheers....
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David Murdoch,
Nope I drive my car (small diesel 60mpg) and usually use the tows, though occasionally tour. I take the train when I go to France and have kept my flying to under one return flight a year in the last decade. I bet my days/weekends in scotland by car are a lot more eco friendly than your putative daytrips to europe by low cost airline.
No I don't work for the oil industry, but would it be relavent if I did. I'm just saying that your suggestion to fly for a day trip is a profligate waste of valuable hydrocarbon resources.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Dave Horsley, and skiing isn't in general?
Just to salve your eco-pain, I'm relocating myself to Geneva for many reasons but one is to avoid so many flights. 
Scottish Ski Bum, no sweeping generalisations around here then?
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jonflat2, if you're going up from London, the sleeper is a realistic option (Aviemore for CG, Fort William for Nevis). Its £100 return if you book 8 days in advance (theres the catch) or £160 the day before, but for that obviously you get overnight transport and two nights accommodation.
If you're driving up to Nevis/Glencoe, the bunkhouse that advertises on winterhighland.com (can't remember its name, but its very nice with a well stocked bar and does food) is about £10/night for a shared room with 6 sweaty walkers. Either that or the youth hostel outside Fort William, or take your pick. If I'm going to Glenshee I drive up to Stirling and stay in the hostel there and get an early start - breaks the journey nicely as you don't realise just how bloody far it is to drive from down here!! Youth hostels are the way forward - cheap and full of interesting people, only some of which are luxuriously bearded and have an unnatural affection for briar pipes.
Sadly, I think Scotland is off limits for me for this season - done 3 trips this year, but inconsiderate people are having stag weekends and weddings throughout April. So thoughtless. 
People are a bit twitchy when it comes to Scottish skiing, we spend forever being told by others that its rubbish compared to the Alps, so end up getting out of our prams to defend it at any sniff of a debate. Just to weigh in with my tuppeny-worth, skier numbers are much lower in the highlands today than in the "golden days" of the 1970's and 1980's because of public perception (you'd be amazed how many people in the central belt have no idea that skiing goes on in the hills), constantly trotting out the line that it "doesn't snow any more", and winters aren't like they used to be (theres certainly an element of truth in this comparing recent years to the 70's, but have a look in the archive on winterhighland and see the conditions in February in the 1960's - looks strangely familiar! Was anyone talking about climate change then?). Plus when you can fly to the alps for the price of a bag of sweets for pretty well guaranteed snow, its hardly surprising people choose to do this once or twice a year instead of a few weekends at Cairngorm in the wind and rain! Mind you - given the choice, and because of its very thrilling rarity value, a blue sky powder day in Scotland blows anywhere else out of the water in my book, principally because of where you are, and you spend all day pinching yourself that its really true and you end up recounting the experience to anyone who'll listen for months afterwards.
Its a bit like following Shrewsbury Town. You're forever being told that your team's rubbish and the Premiership's where it's at, and the team does nothing to dissuade you from believing that, but you love it nonetheless, and once in a while they do something amazing like beating Everton at home in the FA Cup, and then Gay Meadow is the best place in the world and you wouldn't change it for all the tea in China. And you're back again the following week to watch a dismal encounter in the rain against bloody Rochdale.
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paulmck, A fair plan although I would prefer slightly more upmarket accomodation. And I bet I could do a weekend in the alps for about the same money...but that is, to carry on the spirit of your post, entirely beside the point.
The last day I had at Glenshee was a cracking blue sky day with about 6-10" of fresh. Very, very, fine indeed.
However, I generally (need to) plan my life a little more in advance of the night before and so prefer to forego the emotional and sentimental delights of returning to auld haunting grounds in place of having a reasonably good chance of good skiing. I am glad you picked up on the "thrilling rarity value" but I wish you well!
As for Dave Horsley, Scottish Ski Bum, I did not advocate one day trips and I didn't mean to but I guess I did hit a wee sensitive nerve? A bit "twitchy" are we?
A visit to Scotland is well worth it for many, many reasons but personally I wouldn't plan a trip around skiing. Or if I did, I wouldn't complain if it didn't work out the way a week/weekend in the alps is more likely to. Although I would seek solace in all the other things one might do...
But hey, if this thread keeps alll those nasty, one-piece-of-nevica-apporting, southern-bar-stewards down in their rightful place ("don't mention the rugby") then that's got to be a good thing hasn't it?
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| jonflat2 wrote: |
Thanks to johnboy for directing me to this thread.
Thinking about a visit to snowy Scotland sometime in April (conditions allowing). Was thinking of the Nevis range or CairnGorm ... and wondered if there were any recommendations on hotels? In fact any advice or tips for a first trip North of the Border would be gratefully received!
Cheers.... |
Glenmore Lodge (just off the road to the gorm) is 20quid pp b&b. Its an outdoor centre but often has free rooms.
It has a bar & restaurant as well.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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jonflat2, Glenmore lodge is pretty civilised. If it still exists the Struan House hotel in Carrbridge used to be very atmospheric. http://www.struanhousehotel.co.uk/index.htm
Check out also The Boat Hotel at Boat of Garten.
For somewhere fun en route, the Moulin at Pitlochry has (at least used to have) its own brewery http://www.moulinhotel.co.uk/
You probably do want to have a car...
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